Growing vegetables, heck, even growing houseplants, is not something with which I have much experience compared to my farming-for-generations neighbors. In fact, there was a time when friends would laugh me off my front porch if I brought up the idea of me growing anything. I was, perhaps, best known for my black thumb.

That is, you see, until I actually put some effort into learning what I didn’t know. By far, the best teacher has been experimentation. Just throw some seeds in the ground and see what they do. Seriously.

Last year, we started with just a little 20 foot by 20 foot garden to do just that – throw some stuff in the ground and see what happens. Some stuff did well, others didn’t. Frogs made homes out of my corn stalks. Birds picked apart my onions. Ants made highways out of my watermelons. But, my tomatoes and basil plants ran like gangbusters. My sugar snap peas and cucumbers took on a whole life of their own.

This year, we decided to go big or go home. I ordered more than $300 worth of seeds and plotted out an ambitious 5,000 square feet of gardening heaven (or hell, depending on how prolific the weeds are growing this week.) So far, we’ve planted radishes, four types of lettuce, yellow onions, carrots, turnips, cucumbers, 20 tomato plants, two types of basil, spinach, broccoli, kidney beans, zucchini squash, corn, and sugar snap peas.

We’ve also planted some lemon grass, some apple mint, some peppermint, asparagus, strawberries, grapes, chives and leeks. Oh, and did I mention, we built a greenhouse for herbs, seed starts and to house tender plants over the winter?

Sound ambitious for a true novice? You betcha…but like I said, it’s go big or go home this year. And I haven’t even mentioned the bell and jalapeno peppers, the watermelon, cantaloupe, and shelling peas we have yet to get in the ground. Or all the spearmint, lemon verbena, dill weed, chamomile, and various other herbs still going in the greenhouse.

We’ve already harvested our first crop of the year, too. I put in about a half dozen 12 foot rows of radishes back in early March. Those are now all harvested and the bare spot waiting for another shipment of seeds for Round 2. In the meantime, I have a few jars of pickled radishes and a few pounds of fresh whole radishes slowly dwindling away with every dinner salad.

Last year’s radishes bolted straight to seed because I planted them too late and again, Mother Nature brought the heat a little too early. This year, the radishes actually grew well! Really well, in fact. As such, I learned a few things to keep in mind for the next crop.

See what happens when you don't hill your radish crowns?

• Don’t mulch over the radishes. While this does keep the weeds down, it can also trap heat. Radishes are a cool weather crop – they don’t care much for heat.
• As the plants mature, push dirt back up around any red that pokes up above the surface. This helps the radishes keep their round shape. If you see red crowns popping up, the radish will elongate if you don’t keep dirt hilled over it.
• Make sure to thin young seedlings early and often, before the leaves get big enough to cover stragglers. If you miss any and they grow too close, you won’t get a radish, you’ll get long spindly roots you can’t use. Your rabbits will love you for the scraps, but your salads will be radishless.

Once you harvest your radishes, there are a few options for preserving them, if you have more than you can use. You can dehydrate them and eat them as chips, or you can pickle them and keep them in the fridge. A word of warning if you choose the refrigerator pickle option – hold your nose when you open them. The odor is pretty…um…strong – yeah, we’ll go with that one – strong.

Here’s the recipe I used. Each “batch” makes 1 pint jar of pickled radishes.

Refrigerator Pickled Radishes

2 dozen radishes, sliced

1 cup cider vinegar (white vinegar will work, too)

1 cup sugar

1 tbsp mustard seed

½ tsp celery seed

2 tsp dill weed

***you can substitute 2 tbsp pickling spice for the listed seasonings, if that’s what you have***

Warm sugar, vinegar and spices just enough to melt the sugar. You don’t have to boil it, just warm it enough to get the sugar melted and mixed in well.

Fill a sterilized canning jar 2/3 full with sliced radishes. Pour warm vinegar/sugar mixture over the radishes, leaving ½ inch headspace. Put the cap on and shake the jar gently. So long as the vinegar mixture isn’t too warm, you can put it right into the fridge.

Once a day for the first few days, take the jar out of the fridge and shake it gently to redistribute the spices. It takes 48-72 hours for the radishes to really pickle well. The vinegar will pull the red out of the radish skins and turn everything a soft pink. And, the longer the radishes sit in the fridge, the more mellow they get.

Pickled radishes are great as a small side dish (think cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving) or as a topping on salads. If you put them on salads, keep in mind the vinegar will sour dairy-based dressings. Go with an Italian dressing or some kind of vinaigrette. My favorite partner in crime loves them with raspberry walnut vinaigrette. Just remember…the jar will have a powerful odor, so you might want to open the jar in the kitchen and put some in a small dish, before bringing them to the table.

We’ve had some record-breaking warm weather this Spring – darn near hit 90 degrees before the first week of April was done! After an unusually warm winter, that means everything is coming into season early…including berries.

Wild blackberry canes

While we’ve pretty much been garden slaves over the last couple of months…tilling, raking, planning, calculating, and of course, planting, we have managed to steal away a few free moments here & there. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, we took the time to kind of wander the property around the house a bit…just looking around for no real reason. Lo and behold, the side property (about 4-5 acres) is full of wild blackberry bushes! We’re talking hundreds, if not thousands of square feet of wild blackberries!

Along the back property line behind the house, we even found (what we thought) were some ripening blackberries. Little red berries dotted the overgrown grass, punctuated by the occasional beady little black colored berry. Over the course of a couple of days, we managed to pick a couple of quarts of these lovely little black berries – tossing a few into pancakes, eating some right off the vine, and digging up recipes for fresh wild berries.

I noticed that we seemed to have two different types of blackberries – and even pointed out the differences between the two plants to my favorite partner in crime. Not knowing much about foraging for wild berries myself, and having no pocket reference something or other conveniently stuck in a hip pocket, we concluded that perhaps we simply had two different types of wild blackberries. At least, that is, until I had some free time to hit up Google and do some digging.

Wild dewberries in our backyard

After researching wild berries and looking at hundreds of pictures – I found the answer. Sure enough…they’re two different plants. We have dewberries, which are, in fact, very close relatives to blackberries. These lovely little delights grown on vines, close to the ground. That’s what we’ve been picking the last few days.

They’re nearly indistinguishable from blackberries, except for the actual characteristics of the plant itself. Same white flowers, same green to red to black berries, even the same sweet-tart flavor. The difference is, these have red hairy vines and like to stick really, really close to the ground. (Watch those hairy vines…they’re really hair-like stickers you don’t notice until you brush your hand on something else and feel the sting of all those hairs stuck in your skin!)

We also have true wild blackberries – they grow upright on canes. Ours are somewhere between a foot and 3 feet tall. Some are just single “stalks” covered in green leaves and berries. Others (I assume more mature plants) are more bush-like.

Dewberries normally ripen in Georgia around late May or early June. Blackberries take another month or so. With our unusually warm winter and very warm spring, the dewberries seem to be coming in a few weeks early. They’re everywhere – both the dewberries and the blackberries.

Our dewberries seem to prefer the edges of the woods and small clearings between trees. They also seem to like the same kind of spots as honeysuckle, as the two seem to be frequent neighbors on our property. The blackberries, on the other hand, seem to like the wide open space of our side property. They do, however, seem to like the dips in the property, rather than the higher spots.

What I’m most excited about is taking these wonderful berries to market in a few days! We’ve made jams, fruit leathers, purple pancakes, muffins and all sorts of wonderful yummies for the house. Now, however, it’s time to share them with the rest of the world. We’re going to our first public market this coming weekend. Yippee!

For those of you in the CSRA, we’ll be at the Benderdinker in Evans on Saturday the 28^th. The following Saturday, we’ll be Diggin’ the River at the Augusta Market on Riverwalk. If you can’t come see us in person, be sure to check out Augusta Locally Grown…we’ll be offering our farm wares there over the coming weeks. Pick ups are every Tuesday – your choice of Evans or downtown.

Hope to see lots of you there!

Oh…and stay tuned to the blog…we have exciting changes coming here, too! Wait ‘til you see the new farm logo I threw together.

Before we talk about gardens and fall plans, I gotta take a minute to send out a heartfelt, bittersweet happy birthday wish. Today would have been Frank’s 43rd birthday. While I don’t wallow in former special days like our anniversary (although this year being the 20th was a little tough) or birthdays, and certainly not more unpleasant historical dates, I do make sure I take a second every year to pause in remembrance.

So, with that said, Happy 43rd Frank. Wish you were here so I could tease you about loosing hair and gaining candles. I’d love to see the look on your face as you walk the farm yard. I wonder what you’d say. (Other than “Oh boy. Here she goes again with another idea.” lol. )

Now…on to the topic at hand…my plans for a fall garden.

As I check my garden daily for watering needs, pests, and just to see how all my goodies are doing, I’ve started thinking about what I want to plant after this round of edible yummies are done. I’m glad I started thinking early. In sitting down the other day to start planning what I want for fall crops, I realized many of those crops need to get in the ground by August in order to make it to maturity before the first frost.

Here in Georgia, we get a pretty late first frost. According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, we get our first frost sometime between the second and third week of November. (The Athens area is the second week, Savannah’s the third week – and our farm is smack dab in the center between Athens and Savannah.)

Counting backwards so everything is harvested before the first frost (or ready to mulch over for winter) that means a lot of what I’d like to try should be in the ground as early as August, no later than September.

Yikes! That means I better get a move on…August is only a month away. Since most of our local garden shops, feed & seeds, and garden centers only really focus on seeds and seedlings for spring, I need to pick a seed supplier so I can order what I want to plant for our first late summer/fall garden. If I wanted to go big scale and plant acres and acres of stuff, well then, the feed & seeds could probably get what I need…but we’re not ready for the big leagues just yet.

On the list of possibilities for our fall garden:

1. Broccoli
2. Argula
3. Bibb lettuce
4. Chicory
5. Escarole
6. Radicchio
7. Radishes
8. Carrots
9. Garlic
10. Leeks
11. Onions
12. Garden peas
13. Potatoes
14. Spinach
15. Corn
16. Cucumbers
17. Sage
18. Thyme
19. Chives
20. Bay
21. Maybe more tomatoes in containers to be moved to the laundry room if the weather gets too cool too soon.

Some of our choices aren’t necessarily fall crops, but they are cool weather crops. Given the longer, warmer season here in the South, I’m hoping we can sneak in a few more traditional spring crops once the summer heat starts to ease off, but before the cold sets in. The worst that can happen is they don’t do well and I can note that for next year.

Some of what we’re planning on planting (such as garlic) will get mulched over for the winter and harvested in the Spring/Summer next year. I can’t wait to see how everything turns out this fall. Our spring garden hasn’t been a resounding success, but it’s been a wonderfully fun and adventurous learning experience. Gardening and just digging in the dirt has become a wonderfully relaxing, even therapeutic hobby for me.

Some nights, I doze off with visions of a packed root cellar, bunches of herbs drying in the kitchen, rows of canned goodies lining my pantry, and wonderful dinners with all sorts of garden fresh yummies. Granted, I have to convert the basement into a root cellar, build the pantry, and learn how to can before those visions become a reality…but at least we’re taking the first steps by learning how to garden.

What about you? Are you planning a fall garden? What do you have in mind for it? Any previous experience or things to keep in mind you’d like to share?

In just a few more weeks, I suspect I’ll be drowning in fresh produce from the garden. I took a look around the other day, and man are things starting to sprout goodies!

The corn is lookin’ really good. After not growing much over the last few weeks, it seems several of the plants have shot up in this last week. I’ve increased my watering time early in the mornings, or late in the evenings, before or after the heavy heat of the day. That seems to be making quite a difference.

Little ears of corn are starting to pop up

Next door to my corn, the watermelon vines are going into hyper drive. There are a few little melons starting to make an appearance here and there. Right now, they kind of resemble those watermelon gumballs you sometimes see in the little gumball machines. Hopefully, by the end of July/early August, we’ll have garden fresh watermelons ready for munching.

The potatoes seem to be doing well too. I’ve stopped mounding them over, so now I’m just waiting for them to stop flowering and the greenery to die off. Then we’ll be ready to dig up some taters. I started with just a 5lb bag of store-bought potatoes that we let develop eyes. I’m curious to see how they fair and what we’re able to harvest.

Next to the potatoes are my cucumber vines – the only two out of 6 that ever sprouted. One is languishing, but has a few baby cucs sprouting. The other vine, I swear it seems to grow 3 or 4 inches a day! We picked the very first cucumber from the vine yesterday. Probably should’ve let it ripen a little more, as Josh said it was a tad bitter to him. The big vine has at least 6 baby cucs sprouting at various points, so I hope we’ll get quite a few before the end of the season.

The first round of tomato plants have produced 2 dozen tomatoes from just two plants. I had to pull up one of the original three, as it was showing signs of late blight. The two remaining plants keep showing up with tons of blooms, but they just don’t seem to be able to make it through to forming maters. Perhaps it’s the heat. I know that watering the garden longer seems to be increasing the number of blooms, so I’m still holding out hope for a few more tomatoes from the big guys.

I found two well established, nice & tall Big Boy tomato plants at our local feed & seed the other day, on clearance for $3 for the two. I don’t know if they’ll do anything transplanting them this late in the season, but I’m hopeful. They’ve been in the ground for a few days now, and so far (knock on green wood) they seem to be doing okay. A few little blooms on them too – already there when I transplanted, and still lookin’ healthy. Fingers crossed – I’d like more maters for a big batch of sauce.

And finally, my beans have sprouted nicely. I originally planted two kinds of beans on either side of the lettuce – one lima & the other pole beans. One side never sprouted, (and became home to my new tomato plants) and the other seems to be doing well. I’m just not sure which beans I planted on which side…so if anyone can tell if these are limas or poles from the little leaves, I’d appreciate the heads up. I think I planted the limas on this side. (Note to self: next year, remember crop labels.)

Oh, and my granddaughter (Raydin) planted a little flower bed in the garden. They all seem to be doing rather well. They’ve spread out a little, and have bloomed several times in a nice array of colors.

Horray! The garden is already ready for its very first harvest – a small batch of basil. I noticed the plants had started to flower, so it’s definitely time to snip off some fresh basil for the kitchen!

It’s a little hard to see in the photo, because the sun was shining so bright yesterday morning, but there are a few little buds on the top of my largest basil plant. You can see one of the little white ones towards the center. They say not to let them flower, lest the leaves turn bitter. Then again, I’ve heard some folks say that their plants won’t stop flowering, no matter how many times they snip off the buds, with no discernable difference in the taste.

I’d rather not take any chances, so I trimmed and snipped flowers, buds, and anything that looked like it might want to flower. I also cleaned up some of the lower leaves that were looking a little worse for wear. Once I cleaned things up a bit, I started looking for nice, true green leaves to harvest. I plan to use them for pesto, so I wanted nice leaves that would freeze well.

I didn’t take a whole lot in terms of harvested leaves. I figured between trimming the bottom leaves and snipping off flowers, I had taken off quite a bit. They say no more than 1/3 of the plant, if you want it to continue to grow. I don’t even think I took a quarter of the plant, but still. Why take more than I need right now? I may go back in a few days and harvest a bit more. First, however, I want to give the plants time to recover from the clipping and see what they do. I’m going for bushy, thick plants rather than tall slender ones, so I kept most of my trimmings to the top.

Not a bad first harvest, considering I only have two plants and most of what I trimmed was tossed to the rabbits. (I didn’t want yellowed leaves, or leaves with holes for my pesto.)

I’m just tickled that stuff in the garden seems to have survived long enough to make it to any kind of harvest. In fact, the basil plants were some of the ones we weren’t sure would make it. They looked kind of sad and droopy a week or two after we transplanted them into the garden.

I can’t wait to see what else sprouts in the coming weeks. The tomato plants are beginning to tower over the wire cages. Funny, they were barely up to the second ring of the cages when I came home from New York just a couple of weekends ago. Now they’re towering over the cages and sprouting the little yellow flower beginnings of what will be tomatoes in just a few more weeks.

Of the six cucumber hills I planted, only three sprouted. One of those sprouts shriveled before it barely started. The other two seem to be doing well enough, so I turned over the four dead mounds and dropped in potatoes instead.

I replanted the Danvers carrots that never took off – let’s see if Round 2 does any better. If these don’t sprout, I’m going to assume the batch of seeds I bought are too old. That happens. Stuff sits around in seed packs for who knows how long before it ends up in the ground.

I also planted the next round of iceburg lettuce. The first batch seems to be doing well. Round 2 ensures we’ll have a continuous supply of lettuce for salads, bunny treats, etc. I just planted them a few days ago and already we’re seeing tiny little lettuce sprouts peaking out of the beds.

The corn, watermelon, and more marigolds are all in the ground now. Just a matter of waiting to see what sprouts.

All that’s left now is to build the center raised bed in the garden for beans and such. I hope to get to that this weekend, while little Miss Raydin is here for her visit. She can play in the dirt while Grandma builds the beds and schleps dirt into them.

I can’t wait to see what’s growing come this time next week. I love watching stuff I stuck in there grow and turn into something for the kitchen. It’s like a slow motion magic show.

That’s good news! Nothing died. Although, I seriously doubt the boys watered the garden daily like they were supposed to while I was in New York. I don’t think radish leaves should turn yellowish, or the little flowery buds on my tomato plants dip and brown out…but I’m not going to argue. It was nothing a little plant food and a little extra watering couldn’t fix.

Since things are growing well around the farm, I thought I’d take everyone on a little picture tour. My formerly bare root osage orange plants are starting to leaf.

The basil and tomato plants are looking healthier than they did when I got home. During the first couple of weeks, I wasn’t sure the basil would make it. Seems to be doing just fine!

Even the ivy I’ve been letting go wild on the front of the house seems to be sprouting extra legs. (I’m hoping it will grow and eventually cover the ugly gray brick at the front door.

Since everything is so green, and the real heat hasn’t kicked in yet, I’ve moved my office outdoors…under my favorite shade tree out back.

It’s nothing fancy, just a couple of chairs and a small table. But it’s so nice to sit in the shade with just a book, a pad of paper, and my favorite pens.

I even have my own sound system in the new office.

So, there you have it…the most recent tour of the farm. The garden is limping along, in spite of spending a week in New York with my oldest daughter and leaving the guys in charge of garden chores. My new office is ready and quite enjoyable. And things are blooming, budding, and turning green everywhere.

We’ve even started a new project…building a temporary pen for Zeeva and her puppies, now that they’re opening their eyes and starting to wander around my indoor office. More on that later…